Meet the Board

We are a small team of librarians, educators, and other professionals. We look forward to connecting you and your community with the physical and virtual world resources you need. Note: If you contact us in Second Life or OpenSim, please drop a notecard (IMs tend to get capped).

Dr. Valerie Hill, Ph.D.

Director, Librarian & Educator

Val serves as Director of the Community Virtual Library, a project of New Media Arts and teaches part-time multi-media courses at Peninsula College in Washington. Her research centers on digital citizenship and information literacy through the exploration of changing landscapes for education and libraries in digital culture. Her recent book publication is Metamodernism and Changing Literacy: Emerging Research and Opportunities. 

Carla Pritchett, J.D.

Head of Library Reference, Librarian & Treasurer

As CVL’s Head of Library Reference, Carla is responsible for training and keeping track of CVL’s many volunteers who staff the library reference desk at CVL’s Main Library in Second Life. She holds a Master of Library Science degree and a Juris Doctor degree, and is a Reference and Government Documents Librarian at Tulane University Law School Library. Carla was also a school librarian for several years and has taught Legal Research at a library school.

Becky Adams, ph.d.

Education Network & Consortium Lead, Educator

Becky retired from the University of New Mexico as the Director of Online Course Development & Faculty Support after 13 years. She taught for Albuquerque Public Schools for 11 years and served on the New Mexico Learning Network’s Statewide initiative as chair for Best Practice and is a Quality Matters Master Reviewer. Becky also taught 15 years for the College of Education Teacher Education & Human Sciences as well as Organization, Information and Learning Science (OI&LS). Her OI&LS online course, Quality Matters Certified, received a Director’s Choice Blackboard Catalyst Exemplary Course Award. Becky’s Ph.D. is in Curriculum and Instruction from New Mexico State University, specializing in Instructional Technologies. She earned a minor in Educational Administration from UNM, as well as a NM Level 3 Teaching license. Becky has been part of the Virtual Worlds in Education community since 2007.

Beth O’Connell

Communications Lead, Librarian & Educator

Beth, a school librarian since 1998, holds a Master of Education (School Library Media) degree from James Madison University. Beth came to Second Life in 2012 and attends four to six inworld events weekly. She is a VSTE Facilitator, the Producer for the ISTE Speaker series, and publishes the weekly transcript for VWER (the Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable). Beth also owns the Book & Tankard Pub in Victorian Steampunk Caledon in Second Life, is involved with VSTE’s Minecraft server, and initiated an outpost for VSTE on AvaCon’s Open Simulator grid.

Advisory Board Members

Rhonda Trueman

CVL Consultant, Leader Emeritus

Rhonda is an Acquisitions & Access Librarian at Northwest Florida State College. Rhonda edited the books Virtual Worlds, Real Libraries: Librarians and Educators in Second Life and Other Multi-User Virtual Environments (2008) with Lori Bell and Teaching and Learning Environments: Archives, Museums, and Libraries (2016) with Lori Bell and Dr. Pat Franks.

Lori bell

CVL Consultant, Leader Emeritus

Lori has more than 30 years of experience working in a variety of library settings and projects in virtual and physical libraries. She has an MS from the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Science. Lori has authored and edited multiple virtual world publications with Rhonda Trueman (links below).

  • Contact me in virtual worlds: Lorelei Junot

breiana theodore

Build Advisor, Librarian

Bree graduated from San Jose State’s Master of Library and Information Science program in 2017. Currently employed in the Library & Archives of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, her primary role is to assist in cataloguing the Institution’s expansive newspaper collections.
While active in Second Life long before completing her MLIS, Bree’s virtual library work began when she joined the SJSU group, the Virtual Center for Archives and Records Administration (VCARA) in 2017. Since then, she has designed various exhibits and builds for CVL, VCARA, and the Nonprofit Commons (NPC). 

Marie Vans, ph.d.

Digital Citizenship Museum Curator, Librarian, Educator, & Computer Scientist

Marie Vans is currently a Senior Research Scientist with HP Labs in Fort Collins, Colorado where she does research in Virtual Reality. She is also a part-time faculty member at San José State University, iSchool in the Master of Archives and Records Administration program where she teaches Design for VR Educational Experiences.

bethany winslow

Director of Online Learning, San Jose State University School of Information

Bethany is an instructional designer in higher education with a keen interest Bethany has a keen interest in using social virtual environments for education, and she regularly attends and presents at physical and virtual world conferences and events.  She is actively exploring other social platforms along with her VR Exploder colleagues, seeking to better understand how using a VR headset compares with desktop access in those environments for teaching and learning. She still enjoys working and developing in OpenSim and Second Life, but most recently has been more involved in developing in Mozilla Hubs.  Bethany also helped to develop CVL’s Hypergrid Resource Center Library in Kitely and Avacon, on the OpenSim platform.

Want to join the team?

Get in touch!